Bush Is Racking Up "Frequent Liar Miles"

Bush Is Racking Up "Frequent Liar
Miles"

Strategy of "lie and rely" relies on
media to disseminate Dubya’sdeceptionsBy Dennis Hans

Lyndon Johnson is
remembered for lying about Vietnam, Richard Nixon for lying
about Watergate, Bill Clinton for lying about adultery.
George W. Bush is known as a “straight shooter.”

What’s
wrong with that picture? Bush has, after all, racked up
more “frequent liar miles” than any other politician in
recent memory.

Not familiar with “frequent liar miles”?
I coined the expression to pay tribute to the staying power
of Bush’s lies. After all, a lie is of no use to the teller
if it is promptly branded a lie and the teller a liar. Not
only does he not benefit from the lie, his now-tarnished
image makes it more difficult to get anyone to believe
subsequent lies.

Call it the Saddam Syndrome: A guy gets
caught in a few lies and before you know it nothing he says
is taken at face value. All the good will is gone, as if
Saddam never shook hands with Donald Rumsfeld or made common
cause with Ronald Reagan against evil Iran. These days,
reporters shout “Show me the weapons!” and pundits deride
him as Mr. Cheat and Retreat. Our news media — without the
imprimatur of a formal U.N. resolution — have even erected a
“no lie” zone over Iraq and shoot down Hussein’s howlers
before they can infect international audiences.

In
stunning contrast, Bush’s lies are broadcast as truth. They
originate at the White House and are transmitted to network
amplification centers in New York and Washington, at which
point the lie leaves the president’s control. He then must
rely on men named Brokaw, Jennings, Rather and Lehrer to
treat the presidential lie with respect and deliver it to
every nook and cranny in America via “the people’s
airwaves.” The longer and farther the lie flies, the more
“frequent liar miles” the president accumulates.

The
strategy of “lie and rely” entails considerable risks. What
if the media Bush is relying on to disseminate his lies
chooses instead to shoot them down? A president is doomed
if his every pronouncement is greeted with groans and
guffaws. That’s why it’s wise to lie only when the truth
won’t suffice AND the stakes are high — to win an election,
to avoid the taint of scandal-plagued cronies, to sell a war
the public is disinclined to buy.

Throughout Campaign
2000, candidate Bush test-piloted “lie and rely.” He lied
to a Dallas Morning News reporter to keep hidden a
drunk-driving conviction. He lied repeatedly to the
national media about his own and Al Gore’s economic plans.
Did so in speeches and again in the debates.

The lies
traveled far and wide. Amazingly, they remained airborne
even after repeated puncturing by New York Times columnist
and Princeton economist Paul Krugman. From that experience,
Bush learned an invaluable lesson: So long as the airwaves
remain loyal, “lie and rely” can override isolated,
ink-based exposure.

As president, a confident Bush lied
after the Enron scandal erupted about how long and how well
he knew the man he now referred to as “Mr. Lay” — though it
was “Kenny Boy” back in the day. A quick study, Bush showed
he had mastered what I call the “fact-based lie”(speaking
words that are technically true, knowing full well they
paint a false or misleading picture) when he said he had
known of Lay in 1994 as someone who supported Ann Richards,
his opponent for the Texas governorship. Lay and his wife
did indeed give money to Richards’ campaign — and three
times as much to Bush’s.

Fact-based lies, long the domain
of weasels, are particularly risky for a president who
presents himself as the antithesis of weaseldom. If caught,
he can’t reply, “Technically speaking, I didn’t lie.” The
ridicule would be relentless. That Bush would resort to
fact-based lying suggests unlimited confidence — both in
himself and the giants of journalism, who he is counting on
to play or be dumb.

Bush and his foreign-policy team have
told a string of traditional and fact-based lies about
Iraq’s links to al Qaeda and 9-11, as well as the magnitude
and imminence of the threat Saddam poses to the United
States. Those lies have helped the president gain far
greater support from the public and Congress for his
aggressive stance than he would have garnered with a
plain-spoken, straight-shooting approach.

Again, we find
that “lie and rely” has easily overcome sporadic, ink-based
attacks. In October, for example, Washington Post reporter
Dana Millbank detailed several jaw-dropping lies about Iraq
and other matters, which he described euphemistically as
presidential “flights of fancy.” But the airwaves held
firm, and Millbank himself got back on the team when he
guested January 12 on CNN’s Late Edition (click here for the
transcript:
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0301/12/le.00.html) to
discuss The Right Man, a book about Bush by his former
speech writer, David Frum.

A controversial passage was
displayed on the screen and read aloud by host Wolf Blitzer
(who missed the irony that the controversy revolved around
those parts of the passage that appear to be true, rather
than the one assertion that is patently false):

“George
W. Bush is a very unusual person — a good man who is not a
weak man. He has many faults. He is impatient and quick to
anger, sometimes glib, even dogmatic, often uncurious and,
as a result, ill-informed, more conventional in his thinking
than a leader probably should be. But outweighing the faults
are his virtues: decency, honesty, rectitude, courage and
tenacity.”

Yep, Frum wrote “honesty.” Millbank, who knew
better, didn’t bat an eye or squeak a peep. Nor did the
presumably clueless Blitzer.

When journalists are this
deferential and reverential, there’s no limit to the
frequent liar miles Bush can accumulate.

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